V Rising Review Summary

Addictive castle-building, excellent combat, varied weapons, and fun co-op are undermined by excessive grinding plus frustrating bosses and PvP focus.

Addictive castle building: Castle building and decoration are a major highlight, described as addictive and wonderfully implemented. Players enjoy the creative freedom and detailed customization.

Enjoyable boss fights: Boss fights are fun, challenging, and rewarding to overcome. The variety and design of bosses are often praised.

Excellent combat system: Combat is frequently praised as fast-paced, responsive, and satisfying. Many players find it well-designed and addictive.

Satisfying progression system: Progression feels rewarding and well thought out from start to finish. Many players find it satisfying and engaging.

Varied weapons and skills: There is a wide selection of weapons and abilities, each with unique skills and attack patterns. This allows for diverse playstyles.

Excessive Grinding Required: Many players find the game requires a lot of grinding, especially for resources and materials. This leads to repetitive labor and becomes more noticeable in the late game.

Frustrating Boss Fights: Several bosses are terrible, causing despair, and are often tedious or unbalanced. Some encounters are stupid and imbalanced.

PvP Focus Hurts PvE: Developers prioritize PvP balance, leading to nerfs that harm the PvE experience. This often ignores core gameplay issues for PvE players.

Minimal Story Development: The game lacks story development and storytelling, with almost no narrative. This is disappointing for players expecting a rich plot.

Long Dodge Cooldown: Dodge roll has an 8-second cooldown, which is considered too long. This hinders combat fluidity and responsiveness.

Castle building core mechanic: Many players highlight castle building and decoration as a central and extensive mechanic. They appreciate the ability to construct, customize, and expand gothic fortresses with multiple stories and crafted elements.

Multiplayer and co-op support: The game supports both solo and cooperative play, including online co-op with friends and multiplayer servers. Players frequently mention the flexibility of playing alone or together.

PvP and PvE modes: The game offers both PvP and PvE modes, including hardcore PvP and PvPvE. Players can engage in player versus environment content or fight against others.

Boss fights and final boss: The game includes multiple boss encounters with unique mechanics, culminating in a final boss (often cited as Dracula). Bosses feature AoE attacks, summons, and dodge mechanics.

Vampire survival theme: The game has a strong vampire identity, with players taking on the role of a vampire in a survival setting. The vampire theme is integrated into gameplay and atmosphere.

Strong overall optimization and stability: Many users report that the game runs smoothly with no serious bugs, crashes, or performance issues. Optimization is frequently described as excellent, stable, and well-balanced across visuals and performance.

Network latency and disconnection issues: Players experience high latency despite low ping, disconnects in singleplayer and multiplayer, and forced server connections causing instability. These network problems affect gameplay, especially for non-host players.

Excellent Steam Deck optimization: The game performs very well on Steam Deck, running smoothly even with a server in the background and no crashes or drops. This highlights strong optimization for handheld and low-power devices.

Low resource demands and power efficiency: Multiple reviewers note that the game is not very resource demanding, allowing it to run on low-end PCs and consoles with long battery life. This makes it accessible to a wide range of hardware.

Dual monitor crash issue: The game crashes when using dual monitors, but turning off one monitor prevents the issue. This specific bug affects users with multi-monitor setups.

Best Played with Friends: Many players emphasize that the game shines when played with friends, and is highly recommended for cooperative play. Without friends, the experience is notably less enjoyable.

Highly Recommended Overall: Many reviewers give strong recommendations to buy the game, often without hesitation and regardless of sale status. It is frequently described as absolutely recommendable.

Works Solo and Multiplayer: Some players note that the game can be enjoyed both solo and with others, each offering a distinct experience. However, co-op is often considered more enjoyable.

Buy on Sale: A common recommendation is to purchase the game during a sale, as it offers good value at a discounted price. Some suggest waiting for a sale even if interested at full price.

Not Recommended for Solo: Several reviewers advise against playing solo due to extreme difficulty, finding it less enjoyable or not worth it alone. This contrasts with those who find solo play viable.

Community fair range: $15.00 - $20.00.

Game completion: 85.0h.

Story completion: 65.0h.

Session length: 4.0h.

Endgame: 50.0h.

Fun is immediate for many players, with an addictive loop and satisfying progression from the start. A large share of reports say the experience later becomes grindy and repetitive around mid/late game or after Dracula.

Friction: Steep combat learning curve; Gear-gated progression behind bosses; Slow crafting and refinement waits; Early resource grind; Solo play feels slow and is tuned for multiplayer; Server scaling for multiple players even in solo.

Solo PvE Survivalist: Solo or private PvE, tweaks gather, craft, and decay settings, avoids PvP, grinds and fights bosses alone. Motivation: Play vampire survival, boss progression, and castle building independently without PvP pressure. Stance: sale.

Co-op PvE Castle Crew: Private or PvE co-op, divides farming, crafting, building, and combat roles, and coordinates boss attempts. Motivation: Share vampire progression, castle building, and boss fights with friends or a stable group. Stance: buy.

PvP Clan Raider: PvP or full-loot servers, clan play, base defense, raiding, meta builds, and farming for PvP. Motivation: Compete for territory, bosses, loot, and raid or defend castles in clan-driven PvP. Stance: buy.

The Windows <8GB VRAM cohort reports smooth, stable performance with no bugs or performance issues over extended play.

Windows <8GB VRAM: positive. A user with 4GB VRAM reported 50 hours of play with no bugs and no performance issues.

Steam Deck: The Steam Deck experience is mixed. Several users report strong optimization, stable performance, comfortable gamepad controls, and good battery life. However, the game is not fully seamless: controller configuration is a major hurdle, UI readability and scaling need improvement, and offline mode can prevent launch without an internet connection. Overall, the game is playable but requires setup and has notable input and connectivity caveats.

Monetization: The reviews show a one-time purchase game with free content updates and optional cosmetic or soundtrack DLC. There is no evidence of pay-to-win, real-money gacha, loot boxes, paid convenience, currency obfuscation, or aggressive FOMO. Criticism centers on base-game price and expensive cosmetic DLC, plus one uncorroborated allegation that DLC is cut content. Under the scoring rules, base-price and traditional/cosmetic DLC complaints alone cap the score at 20.

DLC is cosmetic only: Most reviewers note that all downloadable content consists solely of cosmetic items such as skins, castle decorations, and building aesthetics, and does not affect gameplay. No content is gated behind DLC.

Game is content-complete: Reviewers report that the developer has officially declared the game finished and no new content is planned. The game can be played from start to finish, and the 1.0 release added new weapons, bosses, and gear.

Completion time varies: Reviewers report different completion times: around 30 hours for a completionist run after adjustments, and up to 60 hours for a standard playthrough. Playtime can extend to hundreds of hours.

Community-hosted servers with customization: Players appreciate that servers are community hosted, allowing for custom rules and different experiences. This enables both private servers and customized gameplay.

Free weekend trials mentioned: A number of reviewers tried the game during a free weekend event. This suggests the free weekend promotion attracted new players who then left reviews.